


Future's Fires

by Cara_Loup



Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Force Sensitivity, Lightsabers, M/M, Post-Canon, Revelations, SW OT canon only, The Force, Visions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-23
Updated: 2018-08-23
Packaged: 2019-07-01 15:09:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15776592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cara_Loup/pseuds/Cara_Loup
Summary: Three nights on Tatooine, and a dangerous gift.





	Future's Fires

... _walk through these fires with me_ , says a familiar voice, low and intense, _together or apart_ —

Han wakes up alone.

Not that that’s unusual, it’s more or less the ordinary state of things in the captain’s cabin, but it’s not what he expected falling asleep. And the voice breathing through his head, through his dream, seemed to take the same line. But, no such luck. When he slides his palm out, the cool sheet informs him that the other half of his bunk’s been empty for some time.

Irritation stings Han more awake than he wants to be. With midnight just two hours gone, if the chrono’s got it right, it’s not too much to expect your lover still beside you. All the more so when he fell asleep sweaty and spent, and curling into your side as if all-over skin contact was the only way to keep the power running through a critical circuit.

Han aims for vertical with that picture of Luke at the center of his mind: loose-limbed, flushed and ruffled, and literally aglow with something that’s been absent for too long. And that covers a whole lot more than sex: all the offers Luke’s getting these days could easily tide him over the next decade. 

The _more_ of it frequently leaves Han at a loss for words, but he can shape it with his hands, feel it in the crazy leaps and stops of his heartbeat, clear and close enough. In fact, if Luke hadn’t slunk off, Han might be in the middle of demonstrating that this kind of _more_ is open to expansion, right about now.

Cabin lights flutter on as his bare feet touch the floor. His clothes are scattered about — in his head he still hears a catching, breathless laugh, but his skin recalls Luke’s impatience in a tingling flurry — and getting dressed while still shaking the drowse proves quite the challenge. It’s holding questions off too, but they catch up the moment Han steps into the corridor.

Starting with, what blasted reason did Luke have to steal out into the desert night? Because Han’s willing to take any bet that Luke isn’t aboard the Falcon anymore, hasn’t wandered off to test some nocturnal spike of technical inspiration against her transmogrified systems, like the ship’s captain and co-pilot might when they’re hitting a spot of insomnia. Right now, Chewie’s snoring rumbles through his cabin door, a dependable bass line like the Falcon’s sublight drive. But underneath that sound runs only a faint standby buzz, and underneath _that_ sprawls a brooding silence.

That the airlock’s sealed only adds to Han’s suspicions. If Luke had expected to be gone no longer than a few minutes, he’d have left the ramp lowered. It rumbles into shifting grit, and pale lighting dribbles into Tatooine’s pitch-black night. Han keeps his hands hovering near his gunbelt as he strides down. Takes a long breath of the coarse, cooled air with its trademark edge of salt and a burned-tar smell. Winds twist about and wash up his chest and throat as if trying to read him. Other than that, all’s quiet.

 _There’s a darkness here like no other_.

Luke said that last night, but it sort of slipped by Han then. Maybe because his hands had started to join the talking, or because Luke’s eyes and mouth have a riveting effect on him that just flicks the rational part of Han’s mind to power save. More so when they’ve been apart for weeks.

Still, when they met up this time, in that overpriced docking bay on the fringes of Mos Eisley, he caught something unsteady in Luke’s eyes. ‘Least that’s how Han tags it in hindsight. At the time, all he saw was the flashfire smile, and when Luke leapt down from his X-wing and almost barreled them both over, all he could suppose was “must’ve missed me real bad, kid!” — the last finished sentence he got out for some time. Come to think of it now, there was something else to the way Luke caught hold of him, to the rush of kissing that took Han’s breath right there at the ramp’s foot. A clandestine pressure, like something had rattled Luke so badly that he was still trying to shake it off.

Couple of steps away from the Falcon, Han stops for bearings. Stars aren’t packed as densely in the Outer Rim as they are in the Core, but they overlay Tatooine’s sky with whorls, clusters and ribbons from horizon to rugged horizon. Luke grew up under this vast sky; all his instincts are attuned to this world’s rhythms, while Han needs to remind himself that his own aren’t before he bolts off on some spooked impulse.

Now that his brain’s reached full alert, it’s flashing him a snapshot of his cabin floor: not a single article of Luke’s clothing in evidence. And for a tense moment it’s too much like he’s never been truly here: stole in like a fabled _ai’rinn_ of the desert and vanished again with a curl of wind among the smoke trees. Han tugs a hand through his hair. Good thing that his body retains solid recall with a sweet twinging heat through his muscles.

But whatever Luke’s reasons for taking off, why the hell couldn’t he at least spare Han a throwaway explanation? Like, _don’t wanna wear you out, so I’ll just run a few laps round the Dune Sea, be right back_. Feeble humor at best, glancing off the alarm that’s hooked under Han’s midriff and crawls on his skin.

Luke doesn’t keep anything from him, not anymore. Not like he accounts for whatever he does or plans either, but he’s upfront and cut-glass clear in all things that matter. _Just like he used to be_. Han catches himself in a lopsided comparison of _then_ opposing _now_ , which is about as reliable as recollection itself. But among all his sharp-edged early memories of Luke, that’s the centerpiece: no ego-saving impulse getting in the way of Luke’s raw candor. His heart in his eyes.

It’s not a thing Han takes for granted anymore. On the far side of Cloud City, it looked like all of that had been burned out of Luke. Hibernation sickness didn’t do much to ease the shock when out of the big-bright blur stepped a stranger wearing Luke’s face like a smooth, sculpted mask. But whoever’d fashioned it had done a miserable job on expression, ‘cause _that_ ’d gone missing like a fire snuffed out.

The first moment that mask slipped, the first glance Han got at something flickering round the edges taught his stomach a new kind of flipflop. Brighter and darker than before, but _there_. Probably should’ve realized on the spot that he’d shot out over the edge of friendship. But the truth of it is that Luke’s still as open-hearted as he used to be: he just saves it for the few people he trusts absolutely.

So, no secrets between them. There’ve been times though when Luke gets a little close-mouthed about things related to the Force, and Han knows he’s only got himself to blame. Over the first year-and-something of their friendship, he made a habit of skewering everything mystical with equal parts derision and jive. And he’d still argue that his sallies against Luke’s notions of _destiny_ weren’t totally unwarranted either: just look at how Vader and the Emperor tried to use it against him.

Hell. He wants Luke in his arms right now. And if it’s true that Luke can pick up on his feelings when they’re strong and focused, then maybe there’s a chance this psychic _get-here-now!_ blast will hit him on the right frequency.

A chill’s inching past Han’s jacket as he takes some steps into the wide, restless dark. His gaze tracks across harsh crags and sloping silt, and the silvered salt-pan below. A stick on a rock-slab dissolves into the edgy motion of a crested lizard, and somewhere higher up floats a sharp call. The desert’s full of nocturnal secrets as if it’s trying for a perfect match.

‘Cause this, here, is a secret all their own.

Matter of fact, he and Luke guard their privacy with heavy shielding. Over the past couple of months, they’ve picked a string of out-of-the-way places to get together; they’ve even planted cover stories where nosy trackers might check. But that kind of secrecy is inevitable. Neither of them wants to wake up to the newsnets boiling with lurid speculation, or worse. Han’s volatile romance with Leia got enough of a public raking to last them both a lifetime. Luke provides inspiration for a standing army of gossip-slingers all by himself. They’ve long turned him into the shapeshifting source of a thousand fantasies.

A smile steals up at that. No one ever gets to see Luke the way Han does. And while they might not be able to keep it under wraps indefinitely, there’s undeniable beauty to sharing this only between them, for now.

Though there’s a chill running up and down his arms, Han walks further out into the patchwork of slate and silvered grey. Into the netting of small, furtive sounds, the earthbound rustles and rasps and the wind-riding calls that fly the distance, an accidental music that’s blending hazard through wide open freedom. He sets his eyes on a star that burns between rock-teeth up to the left, and everything catches in the nadir of that moment.

In all the shadowplay, it takes nothing but a slip of motion to trip Han’s proximity alert. Luke steps around a rock shoulder jutting over the lower slope and approaches in sure, easy strides. He’s wrapped himself in a loose robe that renders his silhouette vague and fluid in the dark. But when the light spilling from the Falcon sparks on his hair, all the color’s abruptly drained and replaced by glimmers of frosty white, like Tatooine’s spinning off-course into a freak winter.

Han blinks and the disturbing illusion’s already gone. Just before he woke, he heard a voice saying, _we’ll walk through these fires_. And something else flashing by too quick to catch.

“Where’ve you been?” Han picks a question that’s as close to innocuous as he can presently get.

“Ben’s house,” Luke answers, “or what’s left of it now.”

But Kenobi’s old home isn’t anywhere close to their current parking spot under a great, curving range. Luke pointed it out on the landmap, together with the location of the Lars homestead, vanished now under tons of blowsand.

“Couple of miles, there and back?” Han tries his best to make light of it all. “Hope he didn’t ask you to meet him there, instead of shimmering up just round the corner.”

Luke’s mouth twitches at that pretty crude attempt. “He didn’t.”

When he steps closer, something clinks faintly in the bag he’s slung over his shoulder, and his eyes catch all the light to them with a baffling kind of magic that owes nothing to the Force, that’s just — Luke. 

Already losing track of half-formed suspicions, Han comes out with, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Luke shakes his head, apology more than refusal, and his hands sweep up Han’s arms an instant later — “you were fast asleep” — though of course that’s nothing more than evasive surface logic. Only Han finds that he’s moved past bothered, now that Luke is back where he belongs.

Between them they had a long, slow lead-in that got tangled round some major obstacles — and a jumpstart once they got to the point. Realization, acceptance, revelation all loosened into a single moment. Though that was months ago, Han feels the same jolt push through his blood. He loops one arm around Luke’s neck and savors the catch in Luke’s breath as he leans in, the fingers of his free hand trailing down Luke’s throat, crossing the boundary from wind-cooled to blood-warmed skin. Whatever made him walk miles across night, Luke will tell him when he’s ready. What’s far more pressing right now is to kiss that brief tug of a smile wide awake. And Han makes sure not to let up ‘til Luke’s pulse batters fiercely into his touch.

“I love you,” Luke murmurs against his lips, though he doesn’t have to say it when it’s so clear in his eyes that Han’s throat tightens. “Always will, no matter where the future takes us.”

“Ain’t taking us anywhere tonight.” Han follows that up with a thorough object lesson in mouth-to-mouth, “except back there—” and he tips his head at the Falcon.

Trouble is, once he gets his hands on Luke, he has a hard time letting go again, and now is no exception. So instead of doing the reasonable thing, Han hauls him into full-body pressure, leftover tensions meshing with the heat that stirs a hundred thousand nerve endings to bright attention. Luke shifts with him, and seductive prickles tauten the muscles all along Han’s thighs. He snakes teasing fingers down between them, wondering if they’ll make it to his bunk before or after.

Right now, his mouth and his hands say just one thing, with fired-up eloquence.

 _Can’t get enough of you_.

★ ~ ★ ~ ★

_Come with me_.

Han needs a moment to locate the dividing line between asleep and awake, on the heels of a call slipping out of a vague dream. But he can feel Luke beside him, a curl of warm breath against his throat, and his fingers take a confused path through mussed hair. Still half flaked-out, he pulls Luke closer. His skin registers a pulse nearly twice the pace of his own.

They’ve spent the day sailing over the Dune Sea in a rented skiff, due to Han’s morbid curiosity — morbid, according to Luke, because they were riding to their execution in a similar model. “Yeah, and ’cause _you’d_ taken care of everything, we ended up slogging through a sandstorm,” Han countered, deadpan. “My turn to try and top that.” And Luke swatting at him while he bites back laughter is proof they’ve made serious headway with overwriting some double-edged memories.

As it turned out, the smaller class-two skiff doesn’t handle all that well in the claws of unpredictable winds. Much as Han enjoys a challenge, they got batted about quite a bit, and by the end of the day every bare inch of skin had been sanded down by the hard, dry wind. But that vigorous scrubbing has its merits, apparently. When Luke’s mouth settles just below Han’s ear, his skin prickles like it’s had a sensitivity upgrade.

“Whassup?” Han slurs through a long, indulgent sigh. “Had enough sleep already?”

“Let me show you something.”

Soft as Luke’s tone is, it’s laced with a thread of trouble, and Han is bolt-upright awake in an instant. Or would be, if Luke wasn’t sprawled half across him. But he knows right away that Luke means to let him in on his secret.

“There’s a time limit to — whatever it is?” Han sits up, a first flick of adrenaline clearing the cobwebs from his head.

“No. The opposite, I think,” Luke says obscurely, and adds a rueful, shaky smile. “It’s. I’m just.”

“Too strung-up to sleep?” Han helps out. Luke hasn’t been so nervous about anything since the day they figured out that the tensions running riot between them went back to a shared source. He leans over to graze the scruff of Luke’s neck with his mouth, then with his teeth, for the pleasure of feeling a shiver trickle all the way down Luke’s back.

“You could say that.” Luke turns his head to brush a kiss to Han’s jaw before he gets up. Nervous or not, he’s pretty damn efficient about getting dressed in the middle of the night.

“Should I pack provisions?” Han, on the other hand, loses half a minute to donning his shirt inside out.

“It’s not far.”

If anything, Tatooine’s nocturnal winds swirl more briskly than the night before and whistle among the mountain clefts, tossing grit at them by the handful. But once they’ve rounded those jutting boulders, the wind settles, the hoarse, faraway barks of a durga adrift on its tail. The footpath Luke follows wends up a ridge among gullies drawn by erosion.

A frisson of discomfort rides up Han’s spine. One way or another, this will have to do with the Force.

As often as he’s seen Luke swing his lightblade, in combat or exercise, there’s no way Han can deny that Luke’s got access to powers beyond ordinary reach. And they’re not limited to fighting skills either. When Luke returns from meditation, wearing a deep quiet and that otherworldly look like a gleam on the edge of the visible spectrum, it’s just as evident. Whatever the Force is, it runs and reflects through him and takes shape in him — and that’s just the trouble.

For one thing, there’s no one around anymore to answer his questions or guide him, counting out erratic — and to Han’s mind highly suspect — messages from the great beyond, but those’ve grown increasingly rare. For another, the Force is a gift as much as it’s a draining, demanding pressure that takes a lot out of Luke, and keeping a balance between the two might just be the toughest part of being a Jedi.

It’s most apparent in the thick of confrontation. Luke is deadly in a fight. And because he knows it better than anyone, he’ll bend over backwards to avoid any fight that will push him further along that precipice. Provocation, random aggression, mayhem: nothing gets through that armor of absolute calm. The more explosive the situation, the quieter Luke gets. Anyone sane enough to retain survival instincts will take warning and back out, but there’s still too many that don’t. The worst among them actively gun for a fight with the last living Jedi.

That’s why, over the three years since the battle of Endor, Han has made a point of interfering, deflecting and diverting tensions whenever he gets a chance. Sure, Luke won’t hesitate to throw all of himself into combat in a savage burst, magnificent as only he can be, but success never brings out exhilaration like blowing up the Death Star did. These days, it leaves him weary, in a state too near grief.

Up on a spine of weathered rock, Luke stops and points down. “This way. We’re almost there.”

They skid down a graveled slope, and Luke leads the way to the entrance of a cave, half hidden in the rock folds above the bottom of the trough. _A darkness like no other_ , Han recalls: was that what Luke had in mind? The rock’s a dull charcoal, for all Han can see, like slate or mudstone.

Luke’s got a miniature luctor strapped to his wrist that he flicks on as they enter. The beam reflects oddly off the corrugated rock, glitters zipping back and forth that dislodge every outline. Cool air breathes up from the back, as if the cave angles deep into the mountain. Luke stops after the first few paces, vigilance scrawled all over his posture. It’s almost as if a subliminal tension emanates from the walls, like some kind of electric seepage raising the hairs at the back of Han’s neck.

“I came here once before.”

Luke’s shoulders square to the weight of memory, but Han doesn’t get around to asking about it. Something else hooks his attention. This eerie light picks out the scar on Luke’s cheekbone in pale spiderlines, catches in the fine creases at the corners of his mouth and his eyes and shivers over him in quicksilver. Gone again when he shakes himself loose and opens the shabby leather bag that he brought back from Ben’s house.

The object he pulls out reflects some mad gleams and steadies them into familiar shape. A lightsaber. But not Luke’s own, Han can tell at a glance. This one’s got a heftier grip and the controls are set wider along the handle.

Luke runs his fingers over the length before he lifts it, and the blade springs to life with a sizzling hum, with indigo fire round a core of white. A strong, mysterious color, like the deepest parts of Corellia’s oceans where the water’s so clear that light goes down and down ‘cause there’s nothing to fracture it.

“I made this for you,” Luke says softly.

Han needs several stunned moments before he decodes that simple statement. And it still doesn’t make sense.

At another touch, the indigo blaze disappears. Luke holds the ‘saber in his cupped palms, offering but not handing it over, his face so alight with intense emotion that Han can’t read him at all. That look stops the questions, the hundred different things that reel through Han’s mind and wind up in a murky knot. Still, he’s probably got a huge, big ‘but’ flaring all over his face.

_Who the hell would I fight with this?_

Is it that Luke wants backup ‘til he can find and train another Force talent? Or just a sparring partner? Idiotic, he’ll never be a match for Luke even if they exercise for years. Yet the notion triggers a grotesque image: Han Solo lashing about with a lightsaber like some blundering wannabe Jedi. Temper snaps angry heat into his veins. _Goddamnit, Luke, you knew from the start what I am — and what I’m not_.

Han sets his teeth and points out the totally obvious. “I don’t _have_ the Force.”

It’s not for reasons of tradition or style that the lightsaber’s a Jedi weapon. Luke has told him — shown him, even — that there’s a link between him and his ‘saber, and that connection’s powered by the Force.

“It’s not something that you have or don’t have,” Luke says evenly. “It’s only a type of openness that lets you—”

“I don’t have that either.” Stubborn reflex takes over.

If his objections have made any dent in that quiet self-command, Luke doesn’t show it. “It took me a while to understand,” he carries on, breathing in deep, “but the Force — look, it’s an infinite energy field, and with something so vast, it’s not as if you’re going to receive it on just one wavelength.”

Technically phrased, that makes uneasy sense to Han, and he doesn’t like that ‘cause he’s still bristling on the defensive and not ready to give any ground. Because whatever’s gotten into Luke, this move hits Han where he’s most vulnerable — or perhaps it’s what he sees as the fault line in their relationship, a permanent imbalance.

“So what’re you sayin’?” he charges. “Everyone can just dabble with it in their own dumb way, even if they’re not Jedi material?”

Luke moves just a short step closer, but his eyes search Han’s face with a directness that’s as intimate as touch. “You think I’d want to be with you any less if you never felt the Force?”

Han makes a grumpy sound in his throat. Trust Luke to take the wind out of his sails with just one question. Downright unnerving sometimes, how well Luke reads him. 

“I never said—” Han breaks off this useless attempt to protect his pride. “You would, huh? How’d you even know?”

Thing is, this whole scene cuts to the core of what they share with each other, what holds them together. Because whatever it is that Luke sees in him, Han is sure of one thing: that he’s keeping Luke in touch with his essential human self, with all the things Jedi knighthood clips from the picture. Luke’s quick sense of humor, his hotheaded temper and impatience. More than anything, his reckless readiness to love. And now it looks as if Luke’s shouldering past that, as if he’s trying to tilt the balance —

“Han.” The way Luke says his name answers everything. “You’ve always taken me the way I am. You think I’d do any less? This isn’t about changing you. About wanting you to be anything other than who you are. That’s the last thing I’d ever want.”

Still ruffled, Han pulls up one shoulder and believes every word. This isn’t the Jedi talking, drawing on lofty, abstract principles. Just Luke, with his hopes and fears and flaws, that doggone stubborn streak foremost among them. Once he’s got his mind set on something, he’ll pursue it like a bantha in mid-stampede.

“Okay.” Han clears his throat. “If that’s _not_ what it is, then—”

“It’s nothing but an offer,” Luke rushes the breach, “to... to focus something that’s been there all along.”

Han lets out a thin breath. Maybe he worried from the start that the Force would edge between them sooner or later.

But blast it, he can tell that this means the world to Luke. Just. Why now? Han keeps the question trapped, ‘cause he’s beginning to guess, and that guess takes him down a pretty sinister path. Maybe it’s the feel of this place, too, the way it spins a weird sourceless tension.

“Can we—?” He angles a shrug towards the exit.

Outside, restless air-streams come at him with their stinging chill and strip all the blurry notions from his head. Except this: Luke’s offering him a tremendous gift. All those obscure Force matters aside, Luke’s heart is in it, as sure as anything.

Han stares out along the trough with its compact crust of sand. “You think it’s even gonna work for me?”

“You used my lightsaber once, remember?”

That memory’s edged with biting alarm. Blue brilliance raised into blasts of snow and ice. “Yeah, well. That was an emergency.”

“I think the way you... connect to it depends entirely on you,” Luke says. “Everything else, I could teach you.”

With a slow, gritty breath, Han feels abruptly chastened to the bone. “Can I, um, think about it?”

“As long as you want. It’s your choice.” Luke stands apart, a silhouette cut out from the lightless mouth of the cave. A damn lonely spot.

“Luke.” One step taken, Han swings back and grabs his shoulders. “Thanks. I — I mean it.”

“It’s all right.”

An edge of Luke’s smile slips out, but his glance sweeps away and down, and Han flashes on a memory. The two of them on the fringe of a sandstorm, his own fumbling efforts to voice something that’s heaving raw and unsteady through his chest. He can do better now.

“C’mere.”

His arms fold around Luke, and Han lowers his head to breathe him in, wind-ruffled strands tickling his mouth. Just to feel him in slow currents of breath, a strong heartbeat easing through cloth and skin. Questions and troubled guesswork drop away, and when Luke grips back, it all comes down to one truth that’s midnight-warm and alive between them.

 _Not alone_.

★ ~ ★ ~ ★

_It’s time_.

Seated at the foot of the boarding ramp, Han takes in the desert night. Quieter than the last, and colder too. He scuffs his bootheels through the grit, out in the spit of lighting that slants from the airlock.

Although Luke moves with barely a sound, Han knows he’s there before soft footfalls approach down the ramp.

“You know,” he says without turning, “if you want a full account of how often I’ve made a damn stupid asshole out of myself, y’can always ask Chewie.”

“What?” A startled chuckle blows past his neck as Luke eases down close behind. “I don’t see—”

“That’s ‘cause _you_ always look for the good and pure motives,” Han stops him. “Matter of fact, that’s exactly what I’m talkin’ about.”

He tips his head back and sideways to catch the nonplussed expression. Not following. Luke’s got a smart head and the Force to top it off, but he still has a hard time anticipating the thick selfish tangles that govern most people’s minds.

“There’s gotta be a whole lot that I didn’t get last night,” Han starts to explain and snaps a hand out. “But the most important thing? I _know_ you’re doing this for me, and I act like you’re suddenly turning on me. And now you’re sittin’ back, ready to wait ‘til I stop being prickly about it and make up my mind.”

“No, really!” Luke’s protest flies out at once, as if he’s been tussling with afterthoughts of his own. “I didn’t handle this well,” he says unhappily. “I just — I didn’t know how.”

He’s learned to keep things locked down, but when he doesn’t anymore, there’ll be no roundabout approach. To Han’s mind, that still counts as the opposite of a failing.

He flicks Luke a wink over his shoulder. “Let’s just say all the diplomatic talent in the family went to your sister.”

“To the last drop,” Luke agrees. “But... Han, all I meant this to be is an offer, a chance.”

“I know.” Han snorts. “I do now.” When a hand lights on his shoulder for a gentle squeeze, he turns his head, pressing a kiss to Luke’s knuckles. An offer to share whatever Han’s willing to accept into his own life. A chance to explore the dim middle ground between the solid, quantifiable reality Han’s dug his heels into and those arcane paths Luke walks. Should be an easy choice. But, face it, no amount of mental contortions will resolve this.

“I do,” Luke says, “want things for myself.” And his glance adds _this, you_.

Yeah, but if the good of the galaxy should demand that he give Han up—? Han isn’t going to throw that out and head for an exercise in pointlessness, it’s enough to know what his own response would be. One of them’s got to be a selfish bastard, or this ship would start pitching too easily in a storm.

High over the horizon, a pinpoint light scoots down, flashing a quick traverse across the hanging skein of stars. Han isn’t counting, but it looks like they’re streaking down with every other blink. On another night, he’d suggest taking blankets and beer up to the Falcon’s back.

“Guess I’ll never get tired of looking at this.” He sweeps a hand up, across invisible distances. “All of it, from suns that burned out a million years ago to those just firing up, and the whole of it—” Tiny winks balanced between his splayed fingers. “Here. Well, goes to show time’s not linear.”

He leans back, and Luke shifts around to his side. But he isn’t watching the sky.

“What?” Han grins widely. “Astronomy 101.”

Though the roots of that notion reach down to his earliest memories. This knowledge of freedom, out under the sky.

“All those years,” Luke says slowly, “when I lived here — I used to fret at how nothing ever changed. I had my eyes out to the stars all the time. And now it’s like a place I never really knew.”

Han gives him a long look, the kind that still brings a sweep of color to Luke’s face. This world’s had a big part in shaping him, and the hard, lonely work of moisture farming toughened him up a lot more than Han first realized. But if he had to name a basic affinity, he’d say that Luke’s clear all the way through, like the air over the desert.

“What?” Luke echoes softly, though he knows too damn well, and when Han slips a hand round his neck, Luke is already there to meet him.

Han’s chest hollows to the pressure of Luke’s mouth on his, the slide of his tongue blending the windchill with a sprawling warmth that travels all the way through him. He grabs a fistful of sun-lightened hair, pressing deeper, Luke’s taste and fervent response flushing a rough sound from his throat. It’s a sure bet that neither of them feels the night’s frosty nips anymore when they move apart again.

“Whoa...” Han lets the air out with a helpless grin. He doesn’t recall any exact moment of falling — in reality, it’s been a long slide of moments — but he remembers when it finally hit conscious levels. This star-shot mass of feelings that keeps grabbing his breath. Everything already changed, once he let that happen.

He pulls to his feet and reaches a hand to Luke. “Let’s go.”

Luke scans his face with startled questions that dissolve just as fast — “I’ll be right back” — and heads up the ramp. Down from the Falcon patters a string of tinny noises. Sounds like Chewie’s grown sleepless too, and he’s booted the holochess to deal with it. A rattling micro-explosion goes off as Luke returns with the bag.

“I just need to take another look,” Han adds with delay, “at the place and—” He finishes with a flat gesture, as if _lightsaber_ ’s become a name for some kind of hoodoo. But that isn’t the cause for the disquiet gripping round his stomach again. Luke seems to think that they can carry this open question around from one stopover to the next. Han doesn’t. It’s all tied up with that strange old cavern, and he needs to work out how.

Among the crags, shadows twirl about on silent wings and the air sings with faint high shrieks, the bats’ own navigation cues like they’re blown in from parsecs away. 

As they walk, Han’s mind keeps prodding at the things Luke still hasn’t told him. There’s only one reason why Luke would keep something from him, and it hooks up with a grievance Han can’t quite shake. On Endor’s moon, Luke went off without a single word to him, though he must’ve expected to die before daylight. It’s still a black spot in the middle of Han’s memories — probably because some malignant bad luck might circle them back around to that same pitfall. If Luke made up his mind that he can keep Han — or Leia, or Chewie — safe by heading full-throttle into disaster, he’d do it again.

 _And the hell with it_ , Han tells himself, _so would you_. An impasse that still begs radical solutions, if there are any.

At the crest of the ridge, he tips a look back across the gullies and the fan-shaped basin where braided streams gleam like a memory of long-ago rainfalls. When they scramble down the other side, a weird knot’s starting to twitch in Han’s stomach.

Luke stops outside the cavern and for a moment seems lost in reminiscence. “It never comes easy to me, letting go of the future.”

Sometimes he’ll just come out with things like that, but here it intersects with Han’s troubled thoughts, like sparks flying off the same flaky wire. Still, what an odd thing to say: with most everyone else it’s the past sinking its hooks in. It’s something Luke’s got in common with Leia though: she’s always reaching into the future, her heart and head full. Han’s own relationship with time is a lot shakier than that. Couple of memories that he keeps close, and whatever the future’s going to throw at him he’ll face when he gets there. What amount of control he’s got over his own life doesn’t reach much further than the Falcon’s hybrid systems anyway, and sometimes not even that far. 

But for a moment he gives in and thinks about the future, about the myriad things that might be said about Luke and him, and those that won’t be said. More than likely, people will remember them all wrong, or not at all.

“So you came here before. At a guess?” Han rubs his neck and looks down the trough that slants out from the shadowed range like a rough highway. A couple of miles out, there’s a charred ruin no longer marked on the landmap. Jabba’s Palace. “That must’ve been when you were getting ready to break me outa the carbon block.”

“It was,” Luke returns, “and I had to construct a new lightsaber first.”

“And this cave—?”

“I can’t tell you why, but some places are like... beacons.” Luke pauses over the word, “that gather and reflect the Force.” But the moment Han turns towards the entrance, Luke moves to touch his arm. “Han. It doesn’t have to be now.”

“Now’s the _only_ time.” He shakes his head, a sense of irony spilling over in a small grin. “Guess I’m just not the linear type.”

When they step inside and Luke clicks on the luctor, the effect’s worse than before. Han narrows his eyes at a wilderness of dazzles, and his body responds with another adrenaline outpour that sharpens all senses. 

From one second to the next, everything wavers like sizzling air over hot sand. Through it Han can see threads of moonlight in Luke’s hair, his features grown lean and sharper, the lines around his mouth cut deeper, but the brightness in his eyes is — just the same. As if they’ve reached a place where time isn’t. And then, like a trick of the light, it shivers and is gone.

Han locks his shoulders against a hard, uneasy thrill. For a moment there it felt like he’s being put to the test, and through all the unsteady glitters, something dark’s pressing close. The air’s thick with static. He screws his eyes shut for a breath. What matters is now. Here they’ve moved into the nadir, but out there somewhere at counterpoint, still swathed in dust and hydrogen clouds, burns a new-formed star.

“Can I—?”

Luke hands the bag to him without a word.

Han’s fingers steady once he’s tugged it open. So Luke thinks he might discover his own way of getting in touch with the Force, but —

What if that’s really just one angle on something Han knows by other names? And if so, it can’t be such a big deal.

The lightsaber’s a cool, solid weight, filling his palm. And at that moment, it’s already his, just like the moment is.

It takes only the slightest press of his thumb, and the blade switches on. Han moves it through a slow arc and can’t take his eyes off the magnetic indigo. “How’d you get the color?”

The cavern walls, he realizes, barely reflect this radiance. Across the humming blade, he catches a tight smile full of memories. Luke must’ve been gaping in much the same way when he first handled his ‘saber.

“It turned out that way,” he says. “Part of it is the crystal I picked, and when I lined it up, I thought of you, I — well, I guess I just poured everything into it.”

Han loosens his grip on the ‘saber. The hilt’s perfectly balanced, and he can feel the current through it, smooth and supple. It feels natural, right. Though he’s bound to fumble it badly if he tries anything more than showing off.

“I can tell,” he says without thinking. “Like... it fits.”

Luke’s shoulders rise and sink on a slow breath. “It does.”

Han shifts the ‘saber in his hands, getting accustomed to that humming, blazing energy that runs a tingle up his wrists like it’s taking the measure of his pulse. Like there might be a closer connection after all, more physical than he expected. He can almost tell what Luke means by focus, too. _It’s time_ , he thinks, bewildered, and for a moment it all makes sense — and then it doesn’t. But what the hell, it’s done now and still feels right.

“So tell me...” He switches the lightsaber off, all his attention on Luke. “What made you think of this? Something must’ve happened.”

Luke needs a moment to let this silence go. “The future.”

Too bad, how that confirms Han’s darkest guess. “You had a — another vision?”

Luke’s take on visions of the future is knotted up in complications. You can’t use them as guides and shouldn’t discard them either, and trying to prevent or change anything might just make things worse. No wonder: his first brush with it took him out to a godsbedamned minefield in Cloud City.

“Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“And have you base your choice on that?” Luke shakes his head. “There’s so much more to it. To the Force.” And his expression loosens. “Life. Not just... danger and threats.”

 _Walk with me through the future’s fires_ , says a voice out of time, _and we’ll make it through, together or apart_.

Han nearly recoils at these lines that slip into his head like an echo’s far distant echo. He’s pretty sure that it’s Luke’s voice but not as he knows it, more like a raspy murmur shredding through a gale.

Together or apart: count on Luke to always leave that kind of opening, with a fierce acceptance of change and freedom. Han rubs a hand over his mouth.

When he looks up, Luke has stepped closer. “Han, just... trust me.”

That’s a given. Their trust in each other is a complex creature that’s grown unexpected dimensions over the years. And it’s stretching to cover contingencies of the unfathomable kind. In this case, Luke must be convinced that silence is protection and the danger bound to increase if Han knows too much.

“You know I do,” Han says. Luke doesn’t have to share any details either, there’s a lot he can guess by now.

At some point in the future that Luke saw, Han will be facing a Force-gifted enemy coming at him with a lightsaber, and Luke won’t be there to cover for him. The notion runs a chill straight through him, then it’s gone.

“Just one thing. I’m not going to carry this openly, and nobody hears a _word_ of it ‘til I’ve learned how to handle it.”

Instead of answering that one, Luke catches hold of Han’s shoulders, gripping tight. And the sudden physical contact is jarring like a harsh distance just collapsed into gravity. Han drags him close, the fist with the lightsaber tucked over Luke’s shoulder blade, the warm rush of Luke’s breath pooling at the side of his neck. Some day or night that they spent apart, terror must’ve ripped into Luke’s mind, and whatever the vision showed — well, it doesn’t take the Force to strike an echo of Luke’s fear into Han’s bones. 

“Ah, kid,” he murmurs by Luke’s ear, heart pounding as if he’s just come out of a tail-spin, “love you—” and their mouths find each other with blind fervor. No limits.

But before they make another move he’s got to ask. “You notice anything... anything strange in here?”

And neither Luke’s shake of the head, nor the fact that he doesn’t ask what or why comes as a big surprise. 

Another prickle skims the top of Han’s spine — not like a warning exactly, it’s more like loose power waiting to take shape. The same kind of dangerous he can sometimes sense around Luke. But now’s not the time to try and put any of _that_ into words, Han figures. Right now he’ll be glad to leave this place.

Once they’re outside, he clips the lightsaber to his gunbelt. The weight of a secret dangling against his thigh. The beauty of it. 

Han lets his fingertips brush against it, and for a moment his mind goes into overdrive trying to picture what-all Luke poured into this intricate combination of crystal, metals and light — not that he’ll ever wrap his head round the whole of it. But it’s encased there now, a living connection between Luke and him, made real.

Maybe later he’ll have some flip remarks ready, about that flattering color so like the deep sea. Right. And he might get a customized holster to carry the ‘saber covertly, snug against his thigh.

Maybe down in that cave, he saw time shimmer and blow like heated air. Unless he was just strung-out and head-tripping. But —

At some point in the future, there’ll come a moment. A confrontation when he’ll want the lightsaber to defend himself, and Luke won’t be there to face it with him. And maybe the ‘saber will save his life, or it won’t, it’s a fighting chance at best.

Han tries to tack that premonition to the front of his brain, like it’s a set of warning markers on a star chart, and can’t. He’ll just have to face it when he gets there. What he wants is that fighting chance for Luke and himself, for everything they’ve got and can have in a dozen different futures.

What the future’s too damn likely to forget: Luke and he were life-and-death bound to each other long before they were lovers. Any half-grown Wookiee could explain what _that_ means, and the durable strength of it too. _Force or no Force_ , Han thinks, and then half retracts that, because if Luke’s right about that boundless convergence of all life’s energies, then —

Luke catches hold of his wrist as they clamber to the top of the ridge once more. Phantom streams of rainwater shimmer downslope, and the Falcon’s bow mandibles are just visible beyond the lower rock shelf. One arm wrapped around Luke’s shoulders, Han takes a good lungful of the cold, clear air.

 _We’ll make it through the fires together_ , is how he wants to remember the night’s upshot.

“Let’s take her out to the stars tomorrow,” he suggests with a wave towards the Falcon. “I think I’ve still got that old training remote somewhere, too.”

And that’s just another way of saying _yes_.

To everything.

★ ~ ★ ~ ★ ~ ★ ~ ★

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2k18 [skysolofest](https://skysolofest.tumblr.com/) on tumblr.  
> Much inspiration for this story came from [jessebee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessebee)’s amazing and incredibly moving _[Folium Curve](https://archiveofourown.org/series/498001)_ series, _[Sea-Fire](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7266772)_ in particular. My heartfelt gratitude to jessebee for writing it, and for the perfect lightspeed beta!  
>  Another source of inspiration (obviously): the scene deleted from _Return of the Jedi _where Luke puts the finishing touches to his new lightsaber in a cave on Tatooine — which just raises so many fascinating questions!__


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